An issue - how do we make sure Social Security remains solvent?

[Guest]

There are many economists who believe Social Security is doomed to insolvency in the mid-2000 range. As one who does not believe that "government" must be mommy and daddy to the general public, but the general public often needs to fix things in spite of the government's "help," I'm curious on the ideas any/all of us have on how to keep Social Security solvent.

We've all "been around the block" several times, so one would think we'd have some ideas. I'm not really interested in what either campaign has speechwriters working to impress, but would be more in the line of - if I had ten minutes with each candidate, this is what I'd say and have them listen, not the other way around. Maybe they might even listen!

As a start - whenever an employer is fined for hiring illegal aliens, and found to have avoided paying the employer's contribution to Social Security but still received the employee's services, those fines should go into the Social Security fund instead of the General Treasury.

What are your ideas?

[Guest]

I think it would be a start. How about instead of senting 1 Billion dollars to Georgia (the country, not the state) as a gift for rebuild damage we did not cause, the money be put into Social Security. Maybe it would help repay some of the money stole from the fund by previous Presidents. Just as an added thought; how is it that we can send all that money to Georgia and can only send a few million to LA to help our citizens get back on their feet from the hurricanes?

[Guest]

:agree: :agree: :agree: :agree:

Why are we pouring so much money into other countries without consideration for our own citizens?

I think the first thing to do is to put the government of our great country on a budget and make them live within that budget. No business just pours money into any endeavor without a game plan and a bottom line. The majority of homeowners live on a budget because we do not have an bottomless pit of money and a big debt is only going to put us into dire circumstances..

For some reason our government - not to mention names - think that there is a bottomless pit of money. Money trees in some secret grove. Spend - spend - spend!

We need to find a way to force those that we entrusted with running our government to start acting like rational people and understand that we do not have bottomless pockets.

Vacations during important sessions, in-fighting for the party's sake, pork projects. This needs to stop.

How to do it? Short of everyone voting the long term senators and reps out of office and making sure that the new inductees know that we will not take anymore of the :edit: - I have no idea.

[Guest]

From John McCain -
Americans have got to understand that we are paying present-day retirees with the taxes paid by young workers in America today. And that's a disgrace. It's an absolute disgrace, and it's got to be fixed.
As anyone who knows anything about Social Security understands, "paying present-day retirees with the taxes paid by young workers" is pretty much the functional definition of Social Security. Always has been. That's what John McCain is calling an "absolute disgrace."

Jared Bernstein, the director of the Living Standards program at the Economic Policy Institute, said in an email that he was shocked by McCain's statement:

That is truly an amazing quote. It's like he's saying, "I just found out that taxes come from people...that's a disgrace." It betrays a really quite scary lack of knowledge about basic government.... I know he's not into this kind of stuff, but ... it would be hard not to know about the intergenerational financing of Social Security. It's the biggest government transfer—1/5 of the damn budget. I guess the quote suggests he knows about the financing, but the way he says it, it sounds like he just found out and is shocked.
Dean Baker, an economist and the co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, also weighed in by email, writing, "McCain's position on Social Security is that it is a disgrace. He said so himself."
Now, before you think, "Wow, that must be a slip of the tongue, he can't possibly mean that," please note that McCain said essentially the same thing to John Roberts on CNN. The current bunch of Republicans want to do away with Social Security.

The choice is up to you.

[Guest]

So junglejim,

Explain to us the democrats ideas on fixing Social security. It should be interesting reading. Benj

[Guest]

Congressional Budget Office projects that Social Security can pay all promised benefits without changes until 2052. And we are supposed to be worried about this? Granted, this is not an eternity. But even after 2042, the Social Security trustees say they will be able to pay an average benefit that is actually higher than what workers receive today -- indefinitely --- adjusted for inflation. Social Security benefits are programmed to rise not only with price inflation, but also with wages. So Congress will at some point have to increase taxes or shave the benefits promised to future generations. But that's no different from what's been done before. In fact the projected shortfall for the next 75 years is smaller than shortfalls covered by adjustments in each of the following decades: the 1950s, '60s, '70s, and '80s. It is also about one-third the size of the tax cuts enacted during the Bush administration. The current administration has been using scare tactics (should be no surprise) to dismantel this "socialistic" program. They feel all our tax dollars belong to their elite friends and to pay for no-bid contracts to rebuild what their other cronies in defense industry just destroyed.

[Guest]

Junglejim;

We will soon have 2 taxpayers paying for one others SS benefits. The congress has systematically stoled the SS deposits by the taxpayers and put in IOU'S. If you think that 2 taxpayers can support each one of the beneficiaries and that is sustainable we disagree.
I will give you creds though , You can find more left wing garbage about almost anything to buttress your opinions. Thank God for the web. Benj

[Guest]

Junglelim,

Like I said love the web.
According to the CATO institute...
The SS trust fund will be solvent only on paper. When SS redeems the IOU'S to pay benefits the govt will have to raise taxes to cover them.
CATO says SS is in debt 12.8 TRILLION thats big money even to libs.
CATO says SS is solvent for only 12 years.
Any reform after that will cost 600 billion a year.
Raising or eliminating the cap would result in the largest tax increase in US history. In the first 5 years alone 541 billion. Removing the cap entirely would increase solvency only 7 years.
The thing is why would we be arguing about this?. I would think as members of an age group that going to be dependent on SS benefits to some extent or another. We would want to err on the side of saftey for the SS fund.
That you need to use this issue to make untrue political smears is interesting. The tax dollars you say go to all Bush's friends actually go into the general budget fund, and the only ones who can spend them is in the democratically controlled congress. Benj